Efforts exist in the computer server industry to develop standards for accessing components in a computer system, such as peripherals or boards in a computer. The focus of these efforts is to create manageable hardware building blocks that share data through a standard interface. One goal of developing such standards is to enable plug-and-play type architecture for hardware similar to that which is available for software.
Several standards like the Desktop Management Interface (DMI), Common Information Model (CIM) and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) define standard frameworks by which management data is accessed through operating system-based services.
One methodology for managing systems and networks has emerged, which methodology is termed Web based Enterprise Management (WBEM). With WBEM, both browsers and applications can be used to access information that is made available in network standard formats, such as HTML and XML. Built into Windows 98 and 2000, WBEM uses CIM as the database for information about computer systems and network devices.
Notwithstanding the significant strides that have been made with regard to technologies for system and network management, however, compatibility between the various system technologies and operating systems is lacking. For example, in the current server management technology environment, servers operating with Microsoft system management infrastructure are compatible with Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) based access to the servers. In order to access these servers, an interface accessing the server must also run on the Microsoft Operating System (OS). Thus, for example, a user interface based on the Microsoft OS would be incompatible with non Microsoft OS based consoles, such as a Java based console.
This lack of compatibility is particularly disadvantageous in the WBEM context where, for example, a user desires to manage data in both a Java-based WBEM and Microsoft WMI environment using a single Java-based console.
The present invention is therefore directed to the problem of developing a method and apparatus for accessing hardware component information using a Java console.